1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to oil well test equipment and monitoring or control systems, and particularly to a computerized, automatic well test system that captures and stores information from disparate well instrumentation devices, measures the quantities of oil, water, and gas produced by the well based on the information from the instrumentation devices, and controls well processes based on the measurements.
2. Description of the Related Art
A vast majority of today's wells related to the production of hydrocarbons are completed with permanently installed monitoring devices for measuring data such as pressure, temperature, flow rate, flow composition, flow direction, sand and other. In addition, many wells are completed with permanently installed instrumentation and devices in order to enable both remote monitoring and control of that well, eliminating the need for any well intervention. The control devices comprise means for controlling influx of produced fluids (and the out flux of injected fluids) such as valves, sliding sleeves, downhole chokes and similar. Wells that include permanent systems for remote monitoring and control are often referred to as intelligent completions.
A net oil computer utilizes the aforementioned instrumentation systems to calculate information about an unknown fluid, such as a crude oil-saltwater emulsion that flows through, e.g., a coriolis meter, a water-cut meter, a multiphase metering system, or other type of flow and water-cut metering system. A compatibility problem arises when it is desired to move a net oil computer designed to interface with a specific manufacturing brand of flow and water-cut metering system installed in a particular oil field to another field having flow and cut meters designed by another manufacturer. A typical net oil computer simply will not work with instrumentation from a disparate group of manufacturers. What is needed is a well test system having a net oil computer capable of being easily reconfigured for operability with different brands and types of well test instrumentation devices and systems.
Thus, a well test system solving the aforementioned problems is desired.